IN TODAY’S WORLD, BEING ANONYMOUS IS ONE THING. STAYING ANONYMOUS IS ANOTHER. Here’s ‘Anonymous,’ Trump Aides Say. And Here’s How They Outed Her

The sources said that to crack the identity of the rogue Trump official,  investigators ran previously published works authored by Coates through forensic author identification programs, and they matched the prose style of Anonymous.

Investigators were able to profile the author of the op-ed and book by sentence structure, grammar, punctuation and syntax. They then compared that writing profile to Coates’. The stylistic traits synced up, sources said.

Researchers have found that authorship recognition tools can identify an author with a high level of accuracy when there are several thousand words of available content to analyze, as was the case with the sample size the White House analyzed. Coates’ own body of written work spans two decades and includes several books and dozens of columns, as well as policy papers, speeches and a doctoral thesis.

In short, the authors share the same punchy but at times breezy writing style, with pithy sentences punctuating a fluid narrative.